Base Camp

Each spring, over eight hundred climbers attempt to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. The conditions are challenging, and without warning can become life-threatening. Some make it to the top of what is considered the world's most majestic mountain, but others are not so lucky, and in the attempt to reach the elusive summit, many more have tragically lost their lives. Not all are recovered, their bodies left to the mountain. In the spring of 2010, 18,000 feet above sea level, documentaryfilmmaker Dianne Whelan immersed herself in the challenging and captivating world of base camp on Mt. Everest. In this personal and eye-opening exposé, BASE CAMP: 40 DAYS ON EVEREST, Whelan shares gripping stories of Maoist rebels, avalanches and dead bodies surfacing out of a dying glacier. From her perspective at base camp Whelan interviews climbers, doctors and Sherpas all living for months on end in the belly of the mountain as they wait for a weather window to summit the top of the world.Woven into the personal stories of these climbers is the devastating truth of the human impact on the mountain and the eerie and unforeseen effects of climate change. Experts believe there are over 250 bodies buried on the path from base camp to the peak of Mt. Everest. With the glacier melting and moving at over four inches a day, the toll of the human desire to conquer the mountain is slowly and irreversibly surfacing at base camp.

Dianne Whelan Dianne Whelan is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker, photographer, author and multimedia artist. In April 2010, Whelan traveled to Nepal and Mount Everest Base Camp to direct and shoot her award-winning documentary film 40 DAYS AT BASE CAMP. Whelan's first book, THIS VANISHING LAND (Caitlin Press), recalls her experience as an embedded media person on a historical sovereignty patrol in the Canadian High Arctic. Her National Film Board documentary, THIS LAND, is based on the same journey. Whelan is currently working on her next film and book project, called THE STORY OF WHITE RAVEN, which weaves the indigenous legend of the white animals into the current war on nature.